


forgiveness, can you imagine?

by transzoemurphy



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Canon Jewish Character, Character Development, Forgiveness, Gen, Growth, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Jewish Character, Kleinsen, Learning from mistakes, Lowercase, M/M, Original Female Character - Freeform, Smoking, as per usual, im trying…, not romantic u heathens, parent son relationship, parental relationship dynamics, redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 03:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16054877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transzoemurphy/pseuds/transzoemurphy
Summary: forgiveness takes time





	forgiveness, can you imagine?

jared’s mom isn’t nearly as homophobic as jared thinks she is at first. she’s not really used to the idea of a gay son, but he gets her a book about being gay and jewish. she reads it and highlights shit and takes notes to try to understand her son, because she wants to be better. at first jared wants to know where all this caring has been for eighteen years, but slowly, he learns the power of forgiveness. he begins to actually communicate with his mom and tell her where the lines are when it comes to jokes and comments. she begins checking herself and apologizing. and it’s really nice?? she and heidi hang out and heidi teaches her to make the hot cocoa and the lemon-ginger tea and it’s wonderful.

 

jared’s mom, april, and heidi begin to talk. they kind of drifted apart as the boys grew older due to jared’s dad being a conservative messianic jew and not wanting heidi’s liberalism to wear off on his family, so he kept them apart, but now he’s out of the picture so the women become closer friends than they were before, bonding over having estranged husbands and gay sons and then, later over, having gay sons who love each other. they’ve got a bond thats not romantic but not exactly platonic either, one that’s made of cheek kisses and shy smiles and a wish that they were younger and could remake parts of their pasts.

 

jared’s dad never becomes a better person. he’s a christian, and a total dick to people who aren’t. sometimes he tries to connect with jared — tries to send him a funny meme or youtube video — and jared responds by making sure he knows he’s way too late to fix this. that their relationship was irreparably damaged when he called his son ‘queer’ with nothing but venom and disgust in his tone. eventually the letters stop coming. jared blocks his number.

 

it takes jared nine months to get up the courage to text his mom first. he tells her that he knows she doesn’t know how what she said made him feel, and he’s willing to forgive her if she tries to get better. he sends her a link to a book about being gay and jewish. she orders it on overnight shipping. it arrives at seven in the morning and she doesn’t leave the couch until ten, her cup of tea long since finished, highlighter ink staining her hands and the pages of the book. she’s jotted down a list of questions — and she has a lot. 

 

jared responds a few hours later with the most cohesive answers he’s ever written and his mom is intrigued by many of the terms and responses she’d read. their dialogue continues and it’s possibly the healthiest communication they’ve ever had. jared holds off on the jokes, his mom holds off on the sarcasm, and they learn.

 

she invites him out to dinner and they talk about his life. his college, his grades, his friends. “evan hansen, he goes to the same school as you, right?” “yeah, he does. we’re talking again, you know.”

 

“i didn’t know you stopped.”

 

it sets in then how little she knows, and jared spills everything, or everything you can reasonably tell your mom, that is. he tells her about connor, about calling him a freak, about his suicide. about evan’s letter — connor’s letter? — evan’s letter — the letter was more _evan_ than anything else he possessed. he tells her about googling methods of backdating emails and writing them with evan, long nights spent awake in the corner of jared’s room, spanish textbooks open, jared’s laptop in evan’s lap. he tells her about zoe and alana and the connor project and how everything fell apart. about the fight (fuck you, evan. asshole) and its consequences (just pretend it’s her. it’s not me. i’ll pretend it’s him.)

 

what doesn’t he tell his mom? well, understandably, he doesn’t admit to the hours spent awake at night, thinking about evan, longing for evan, aching for evan. craving the other boy’s presence. his heart. his touch. the two of them entangled in jared’s bed. he doesn’t tell his mom that. he also doesn’t tell his mom how horrible high school really was. slurs being shot across hallways and blades being dragged against skin and cigarettes brushing over lips. he doesn’t tell his mom about the suicide attempts or the drinking.

 

but over the course of many dinners, he tells his mom most of the story. one day he stops, fork in his french toast, and says, “mom? i was in love with him.” 

 

she doesn’t miss a beat. “i know. you aren’t subtle, jare.”

 

“what do i do from here?”

 

“talk to him?”

 

jared laughs like it’s the funniest joke in the world. “it’s like i’ve tried to fix a broken bone with a band-aid. i’m not taking the bandaid off. i’m not ruining this again.”

 

his mom moves on, but doesn’t drop it, and at hanukkah, it comes up again. he says he’s not going to ever act on how he feels. but it’s so difficult, he tells zoe on the phone later. because he’s just so beautiful and funny and sweet and wonderful and forgiving and kind and jared genuinely can’t imagine living without him again. zoe chuckles into the phone. “are you going to try to convince me to hook up again? because i’m in a steady relationship, man.” he wasn’t planning on it, honestly. those few weeks in their senior year were wild, and not entirely bad, but he was gay and zoe was a lesbian. he’d just stay at home.

 

but then, well, there’s evan. and the guy is so irresistible. it’s really annoying, if he’s being honest, and he ends up telling his mom this over breakfast, poking at his waffles. because he’s stupid and wonderful and wow, he’s a stupid gay idiot who needs to stop crushing on the guy he’s liked for about eight years now, because it’s getting pathetic. his mom tells him that it’s not pathetic to love deeply, it just means he has more love in him than he knows what to do with.

 

she’s not wrong. once he began to accept his emotional side, it would come out at the worst possible times. he cried over a potted plant at evan’s pottery barn once (it was just really lonely looking). when he loved something, he loved it fully and completely. when he ignored his love for someone, apparently, it all spilled out twice as fast when he finally accepted it.

 

jared and april’s relationship is repaired slowly, over meals and card games, swapping stories about high school and movies and musicals. it’s not easy. sometimes jared still goes to bed and cries over things she said years ago. but it’s different now, because she knows she made a mistake. she knows she hurt him, and she’s actively trying to be better. and he knows she’s sorry. he knows she made mistakes. and he knows he’s willing to forgive her, even if it takes time.


End file.
